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MARS DIRECT DOESN'T ALLOW FOR DUMB MISTAKES AND ERROR-Wilson '98
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MARS DIRECT DOESN'T ALLOW FOR DUMB MISTAKES AND ERROR-Wilson '98 [Jim; Bringing Life To Mars; Popular Mechanics; November 1998; page 30] Judging from the ovation Zubrin received when he completed his talk in Boulder, it is probably fair to say that everyone in the audience was a Zubrin fan. Not everyone, however, agrees that his nonstop flight is the best way to travel to Mars. The most knowledgeable of these critics is astronaut John Young. Having flown aboard Gemini and space shuttle missions and visited the moon on Apollo, Young knows more about the details of living and working in space than anyone else. At the conference in Boulder, Young argued that would-be Martians should hone their skills closer to home, on the moon. "When you go into space, you have to learn a million and one things that, if you don't, will kill you dead," he cautioned the future Mars explorers. "The moon is close enough to allow you to make dumb mistakes." CHANGE OF SOCIAL INTERACTION PROBLEMS BETWEEN CREW MEMBERS INCREASES DRAMATICALLY DURING INTERPLANETARY FLIGHTS-Manzey '04 [Dietrich; Institute of Psychology and Ergonomics, Technical University of Berlin; Human missions to Mars: new psychological challenges and research issues; Acta Astronautica; August-November 2004; page 781] Problems arising from interpersonal frictions and conflicts have repeatedly been reported from confined and isolated crews and have also been observed during orbital space missions [16, 17, 18 and 25]. Most of these problems seem to reflect effects of social monotony, the sustained contact with others, and the isolation from the usual social network of family and friends. During missions to Mars particularly the level of social monotony and isolation will be much higher compared to what is known from orbital spaceflight or any other analog environments. This is due to the small crew size (6 crew members), the impossibility to counteract resulting feeling of social monotony by sending visiting crews, and the very restricted possibilities for real-time space-to-ground communication during large parts of the transfer phases and the stay on the martian surface. As a consequence, it can be expected that risks for mission's success related to interpersonal issues and a resulting breakdown of crew cohesion may be considerably increased during an interplanetary mission. BIGGEST CHALLENGE TO CREW PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING ON A MARS MISSION COMES FROM CREW AUTONOMY-Manzey '04 [Dietrich; Institute of Psychology and Ergonomics, Technical University of Berlin; Human missions to Mars: new psychological challenges and research issues; Acta Astronautica; August-November 2004; page 781] However, the probably biggest challenge for crews traveling to Mars will be the extremely high level of crew autonomy. Because of the restricted opportunity of ground-based support (see below) and the lacking possibility for short-term rescue in case of emergencies, crews on Mars cannot rely much on external help but have to solve many problems on their own. This can involve the management of external crises, like technical failures or environmental hazards. But it also can involve internal crises that might arise from severe interpersonal conflicts, a serious illness or accident of a crew member requiring a surgical treatment, or a mental or behavioral illness resulting in a crew member losing control. And even incidents of interpersonal violence, or the death of a crew member due to illness, an accident, or a suicidal act cannot be fully excluded in crews traveling together for 3 years, although such incidents hopefully will never happen. What kind of skills are needed to cope with such events? Will a crew be able to deal with such crises without losing morale and cohesion? What can be done to prepare crews psychologically for such crises? Current experiences with such extreme situations are mainly limited to military operations and do not seem to be applicable to a civilian space mission. Thus, it will be very difficult to provide answers to the above questions in advance. CREWS ON MISSIONS TO MARS MIGHT FALL INTO THE TRAP OF GROUPTHINK-Manzey '04 [Dietrich; Institute of Psychology and Ergonomics, Technical University of Berlin; Human missions to Mars: new psychological challenges and research issues; Acta Astronautica; August-November 2004; page 781] Finally, another issue that might affect intra crew processes and the cooperation between space crew and ground might arise from what has been referred to as “groupthink” [26]. This phenomenon has been observed to develop in highly autonomous and cohesive groups working under stress, and is characterized by different symptoms which might seriously affect crew performance and interactions with ground, e.g. delusions of invulnerability (i.e. group members show an unreal confidence in their own competence), high group pressure towards uniformity (i.e. crew members show reluctance to express concerns or disagreement about certain decisions or ways of action in order to keep harmony), and stereotyped views of people outside the own group. Groupthink can particularly impair the quality of decision making. Effects observed in groups developing this attitude, among others, include an incomplete survey and evaluation of decision alternatives, a lacking examination of risks of decisions made, and a failure to work out contingency plans. Crews traveling to Mars will show a number of structural characteristics which are known to promote the development of “groupthink” (e.g. high degree of insulation and autonomy; high cohesiveness). If such a development takes place it might become a serious hazard not only for the quality of crew interactions and decision-making, but also for effective co-operation with people on ground (e.g. mission control). CURRENT KNOW-HOW ON SUPPORTING CREWS PSYCHOLOGICALLY IS VERY LIMITED AT BEST-Manzey '04 [Dietrich; Institute of Psychology and Ergonomics, Technical University of Berlin; Human missions to Mars: new psychological challenges and research issues; Acta Astronautica; August-November 2004; page 781] During missions to Mars the possibilities for such kind of psychological in-flight monitoring and support will be much more limited. As a consequence, the overall concept of psychological monitoring and support must be re-considered and adapted to the specific constraints of these missions, i.e. lacking possibility of any re-supply flights and very restricted possibilities for real-time space-to-ground communication. From a psychological point of view two consequences appear to be most important: (1) It is likely that e-mail will become the most important communication tool during missions to Mars. New approaches of monitoring and support need to be developed that take the specificities of this kind of electronic communication into account. First studies of the use of e-mail characteristics (e.g. length, content) for assessing the emotional state of crew members have already been conducted during Russian ground-based simulations and need to be continued [29]. Furthermore, studies will be needed that address the advantages and disadvantages of e-mail communication as the sole tool for maintaining social contacts between crew members and ground, as well as a tool to provide remote psychological counselling and guidance. (2) Because of the restricted channels for communication that will even be blocked totally for certain periods of time, the quantity and quality of in-flight support which can be provided from ground will suffer considerably during Mars missions compared to current procedures for orbital spaceflights. As a consequence, the importance of other countermeasures, especially those that can be applied in advance of the mission like psychological crew selection and training, will increase. Several attempts have been made to define the optimum psychological profile of crewmembers participating in a long-term exploratory space mission [30]. However, most of these attempts have only been based on common sense considerations or anecdotal information. Much more systematic research during orbital spaceflight, in analog naturalistic environments, and during ground-based simulations will be needed to identify individual characteristics that predict optimum adaptation to conditions of long-term confinement and isolation before valid psychological criteria for the selection of Mars crewmembers can be defined. Another related issue will be to find the ideal crew composition for such a mission. Aspects that will have to be considered include the compatibility of the different crewmember's personalities, the ideal age- and gender-mix of such crews, and the effects of different cultural backgrounds on the efficiency of co-working and co-living. The relevance of these issues has been recognized for a long time. However, our current knowledge in this area must be regarded as very limited at best [19]. A MISSION TO MARS WILL PROVIDE A PSYCHOLOGICAL CHALLENGE THAT HAS NEVER BEFORE BEEN EXPERIENCED-Manzey '04 [Dietrich; Institute of Psychology and Ergonomics, Technical University of Berlin; Human missions to Mars: new psychological challenges and research issues; Acta Astronautica; August-November 2004; page 781] Finally, missions to Mars will provide a psychological challenge that has never before been experienced in the history of humankind. Due to the enormous distance between Earth and Mars, astronauts sent to the red planet will be the first human beings who will loose a direct visual link to their home planet. Human responses to this effect are not known, but it seems almost certain that it will affect the human psyche in some way. This is suggested by many reports from astronauts which point to the psychological importance of looking back to the Earth from space. The main problem associated with this “Earth-out-of-view” phenomenon is that its effect cannot be studied before the first astronauts have been sent out on an interplanetary trajectory. Thus it represents a psychological risk at least of the first mission to Mars which, in principle, will be indeterminable and uncontrollable. In any case it can be assumed that the lack of visual link to Earth will add to the feelings of isolation and autonomy within the crew. Beyond that it might induce a state of complete internal uncoupling from home. It is conceivable that such a state can involve a broad range of maladaptive responses, including feelings of anxiety and sadness, depressive reactions, or even manifest mental and behavioral disorders. Furthermore, a partial or complete loss of commitment to the usual (Earth-bound) system of values and behavioral norms may occur which, in extreme cases, can involve unforeseeable risks for the performance of mission tasks, the individual behavior, and the interpersonal interactions within the crew, and which might make any external guidance of the crew difficult. SUBSTANTIAL RESEARCH IS STILL NEEDED ON A VARIETY OF HUMAN HEALTH AND CONTIMAINATION ISSUES RELATED TO MARS MISSION-Rummel et al 2010 [John D.; Institute for Coastal Science and Policy; The Integration of Planetary Protection Requirements and Medical Support on a Mission to Mars; the Journal of Cosmology; October-November 2010; http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars126.html; retrieved 29 July 2011] A comprehensive medical care capability for a transit mission has to support the crew without the possibility of an immediate return to the Earth, while having to deal with limited, asynchronous communications during much of the mission (cf., Davis 1999; Nicogossian and Pober 2001; Thirsk et al. 2009). Along with having access to such a comprehensive medical care system, key areas of planetary protection (PP) concern and importance to human missions include: • Contaminant transfer (human microbiome, host-microbe interactions, monitoring, quarantine, cleaning/maintenance, handling, etc.) • EVA and mobile infrastructure & support (contamination related)- ingress/egress; sampling equipment; operations, cleaning/maintenance; monitoring, spacesuit/human microbiology etc.) • Habitats and permanent emplacements and other natural environments (zonation, special regions, separation of living and science areas, specially managed scientific reserves? etc.) • Materials containment & waste disposal; biological life support; food/water; sample handling; dispersal of materials beyond habitats, etc. • Human Factors and PP (behavior; assigned crew member for PP, varied impacts of pathophysiology on operations, etc.; cf. Williams and Davis 2005). • Human health monitoring—spacecraft baseline and enroute, on Mars, during return flight, and after Earth return SOLVENCY: SHOULD FOCUS ON BROAD THEMES AND NOT DESTINATIONS FLEXIBLE SPACE PROGRAM IS BETTER THAN A TARGETED GOAL PROGRAM OF THE 1960s-Spotts '10 [Pete; Obama NASA plan: Mars shot as next generation's Apollo mission; The Christian Science Monitor; 15 April 2010; http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0415/Obama-NASA-plan-Mars-shot-as-next-generation-s-Apollo-mission; retrieved 15 June 2011] But others applaud what they see as a fresh vision for the US human spaceflight program. The speech "was truly inspiring," says Louis Friedman, founder and executive director of the Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif. Before founding the society, Dr. Freidman worked for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was deeply involved in several pioneering robotic space missions. "No president since John Kennedy has gone out on the road to sell his space program," he says. "This is American leadership, to do things that have never been done before." Norman Augustine - who headed the presidential commission whose "flexible path" option the president has elected to follow - noted after the president spoke that during the panel's public hearings, members heard from young people who referred to a return to the moon as "my grandfather's space program." OBAMA'S APPROACH IS BETTER FOR THE CURRENT STATE OF SPACE SCIENCE AND POLITICS-Spotts '10 [Pete; Obama NASA plan: Mars shot as next generation's Apollo mission; The Christian Science Monitor; 15 April 2010; http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0415/Obama-NASA-plan-Mars-shot-as-next-generation-s-Apollo-mission; retrieved 15 June 2011] Indeed, the criticisms from many Apollo-era astronauts of decisions being taken by or supported by more-recent astronauts - both on the Augustine panel as well as the current head of NASA - give the appearance that a generational tug of war is underway over the program's future. To some extent that may be true, Friedman acknowledges. But he points to space program veterans such as Buzz Aldrin, who supports the president's approach, as well as himself as indicating more is at play that a generational transition. "It's an outlook thing, too," he says. "It's those who want to think about the glory of the past and try to recapture it. This new approach is about the future. And it's about engaging industries that didn't exist 40 years ago."
[Rand; Aerospace Engineer and Consultant; The Great PJ Media Space Debate; Pajamas Media; 22 May 2011; http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-great-pj-media-space-debate/; retrieved 18 July 2011] Space policy has been in turmoil for more than a year, with the announcement of President Obama’s new space policy last February, in which Constellation, the flawed and unaffordable plan to redo Apollo, was canceled and replaced with plans to turn over spaceflight to low earth orbit (LEO) to commercial providers and refocus NASA on technologies to go beyond earth orbit (BEO). It was the beginning of the end of an era that lasted far too long — an anomalous, half-century era for America, of government-centric human spaceflight with five- and ten-year plans, that was born in the panic and urgency of the Cold War. It had to end because it was both unaffordable in the new fiscal environment, and utterly ineffective in terms of actually sending people out to explore space in any significant way. It survived largely because of vestiges of national pride, and primarily because of the jobs it generated in the districts and states of the few politicians who cared much about it. The new policy is not perfect. It was foolish of the president to dismiss the moon as somewhere we’d already been, but it doesn’t really matter where he wants to go, because if the policy is implemented, by the time we are in a position to go anywhere, he will be out of office and in no position to influence the destination. And the continued support for a NASA-developed heavy-lift Shuttle-derived rocket, driven by the need to maintain some of the jobs lost in the ending of the Shuttle program, will waste billions that could be expended more fruitfully on the in-space infrastructure needed to move anywhere BEO. TURN: NASA AS AGENCY OF ACTION DRIVES UP COSTS LEAVING SPACE TO NASA GUARANTEES EXPENSIVE SPACE TRAVEL-Grierson '04 [Bruce; BEYOND NASA: DAWN OF THE NEXT SPACE AGE; Popular Science; April 2004; page 68] And that's just the American side. In Russia, Cold War ICBMs are being converted into commercial satellite rides, seeding a new generation of private space ventures. Britain, Japan and, most notably, China now have active space programs--and India and even Brazil are under way. Clearly, space exploration is no longer the exclusive domain of two governments and the very large aerospace companies that have served them--or of governments at all. If we leave it to NASA, says John Carmack of Armadillo Aerospace, "cheap access to space is just not going to happen, and it's not because of incompetence or malice or conspiracy. It's just because of the way the industry has evolved." Rick Tumlinson concurs. "Many in the space movement thought there was some sort of spiritual consensus, that government understood that the goal was to get us to Star Trek or Babylon 5, humans living in space," he says. "That was an assumption we had made because we all hang out with each other. Maybe we bought our own propaganda." NASA HISTORICALLY CANNOT DEVELOP TECHNOLOGY ON THE CHEAP-Chang '04 [Kenneth; The Shuttle: Forgotten But Not Gone; The New York Times; 18 January 2004; page WK2] NASA does not have a particularly good track record of accomplishing big projects on a shoestring. In the post-Apollo era, President Nixon denied NASA's plans for a permanent space station, a lunar base, a mission to Mars. He approved the space shuttle, because NASA promised that it would be more economical and efficient than throwaway rockets. Some thought that a reuseable shuttle could cut the cost of getting to space from about $1,000 a pound aboard the Saturn V to $50 or less, and open the final frontier to all, perhaps even tourists. Closer economic analyses showed that the space shuttles would save money only if they flew often -- one mission a week, more than 50 a year. But a space shuttle is not an airplane, and NASA had overpromised. The agency never came close to 50 shuttle missions a year -- or even the 24-a-year goal after the Challenger accident in 1986. With few flights, each trip costs almost half a billion dollars, and the cost of lifting one pound of payload to orbit is $10,000.
[NASA by the Numbers: Cost Overruns Plague Key Projects; Fox News; 10 April 2009; http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,513575,00.html; retrieved 14 August 2011] But congressional auditors have called for a “more disciplined approach” to projects like the Mars Science Laboratory, which has seen its cost skyrocket to $2.3 billion since October 2007, an increase of more than $657 million — an amount roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of Grenada. "What is common among these and other programs is that whether they succeed or fail, they cost more to build and take longer to launch than planned," according to a Government Accountability Office report released last month on NASA's large-scale programs. "As a result, NASA is able to accomplish less than it plans with the money it is allocated, and it is forced to make unplanned trade-offs among its projects — shorting one to pay for the mistakes of another." TURN: MARS EXPLORATION WILL CONTAMINATE THE PLANET DISTROYING SCIENTIFIC ADVANTAGE HUMANS MAY DISTROY WHATEVER EXISTS ON MARS DUE TO CONTAMINATION; RUINS WHATEVER SCIENTIFIC ADVANTAGE EXISTS-Rummel et al 2010 [John D.; Institute for Coastal Science and Policy; The Integration of Planetary Protection Requirements and Medical Support on a Mission to Mars; the Journal of Cosmology; October-November 2010; http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars126.html; retrieved 29 July 2011] The challenges of a human mission to Mars include the cost of the effort and the potential risk to the crew (and perhaps to the Earth’s biosphere), but the costs incurred will only be supportable if there is a clear advantage to having human capabilities present on that world to accomplish mission objectives. If humans voyage to Mars to establish another outpost for our civilization, then human explorers are essential to achieving that objective. With such a goal in mind, one-way travel could accommodate mission success, and focus the crew’s attention fully on their task of survival and spread. Nonetheless, if one-way travel is not acceptable, and if humans are going to Mars to accelerate the pace of potential scientific discovery, to learn whether or not Mars is the abode of non-terrestrial life, then a human mission can only be justified if the human explorers do not erase the information they wish to discover on Mars. Earth microbes are the culprits in both cases—in the first case, human colonists will wish to avoid unpredictable changes in the martian environment caused by their own contamination, and they will not want to be surprised by the presence of live martians that have been obscured by it. In the second case, Earth organisms could easily obscure the faint signal of martian life where it is rare and most easily dealt with, and microbes will have to be kept places on Mars (a.k.a., "special regions") where they might grow and thrive, and where martian life might best exist. If there is non-terrestrial life on Mars, then human explorers will most safely encounter it under controlled conditions. Such conditions will provide both scientific objectivity, and ensure that inadvertent exposure to Mars microbes doesn’t affect the ability of the crew return to Earth. SPECIAL PROVISIONS MUST BE TAKEN TO PREVENT FORWARD AND BACK CONTAMINATION OF MARS-Rummel et al 2010 [John D.; Institute for Coastal Science and Policy; The Integration of Planetary Protection Requirements and Medical Support on a Mission to Mars; the Journal of Cosmology; October-November 2010; http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars126.html; retrieved 29 July 2011] Provisions must be taken on human missions to avoid the contamination of Mars by Earth organisms ("forward contamination") and to prevent the contamination of Earth by martian organisms ("backward," or "back contamination"). Such provisions will be essential to mission success. If Mars will become a home for a future branch of humanity, then provisions for managing the potential contamination of martian habitable zones and particularly possible martian aquifers will be especially important. If humans are intended to forward astrobiological objectives, it would be impossible to achieve them if abundant Earth life were to be introduced into every environment visited on Mars—and disastrous if the crew were unprepared to deal with martian life if they find it. As such, planetary protection provisions for future human missions to Mars are essential to mission success, and must be integrated into such missions during the earliest stages of their design and development. Spacecraft and planetary habitat designs must accommodate those provisions, and the microbial ecosystems within the spacecraft and habitats on Mars should be well known and monitored carefully throughout the mission. As a complement to microbial monitoring, provisions for the careful monitoring of the medical state of the crew will provide baseline data to ensure that health responses to disease exposure and other environmental stresses are not mistaken for the effects of the crew being exposed to martian materials. ROBOTIC MISSIONS LOWER THE RISK OF CONTAMINATION-Rummel et al 2010 [John D.; Institute for Coastal Science and Policy; The Integration of Planetary Protection Requirements and Medical Support on a Mission to Mars; the Journal of Cosmology; October-November 2010; http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars126.html; retrieved 29 July 2011] In order to prevent forward and backward contamination in solar system exploration, robotic missions have well-defined requirements that are based on the biological potential of the target body visited and the type of spacecraft and activities planned for the mission. For Mars, The Committee for Space Research (COSPAR) specifies that the planet is "a target body of chemical evolution and/or origin of life interest...for which scientific opinion provides a significant chance of contamination which could jeopardize a future biological experiment" (COSPAR 2008). In other words, mission contamination can lead to Earth organisms or organics obscuring future experiments sent to detect both. Accordingly, roboticmission requirements have been developed to apply to Mars orbiters, landers that will land at places that are too dry or too cold to support the reproduction or Earth life, and to landers that may land or rove to places that are warm enough and damp enough to support Earth microbes. Assuming they are not also subjected to the lethal UV irradiation of the martian surface for very long (seconds to minutes), it can be shown that most surface locations on Mars are still of the too-cold and too-dry variety, most of the time. HUMAN MISSIONS WILL REQUIRE DEVELOPMENT OF DIFFERENT PROTECTIONS AGAINST MARS CONTAMINIATION-Rummel et al 2010 [John D.; Institute for Coastal Science and Policy; The Integration of Planetary Protection Requirements and Medical Support on a Mission to Mars; the Journal of Cosmology; October-November 2010; http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars126.html; retrieved 29 July 2011] Human missions will require a different approach to planetary protection controls on forward contamination than those used by robotic missions. The human body hosts large, dynamic populations of microorganisms and cannot be sterilized or subjected to traditional microbial reduction methods such as dry heat. Instead, human missions will likely emphasize protective measures to minimize direct and indirect contact with the planet, and to understand contamination when it takes place. Such a strategy will require in-depth knowledge of the microbes carried inside and outside of the crewmembers’ bodies, as well as very detailed knowledge of the crewmembers’ health day-to-day. Health knowledge will be established by space medical systems on the mission, which will also have to deal with changes to the health of the human crew due to the long duration of the spaceflight to Mars (Baisden et al. 2008). A particular challenge will be to correctly identify the cause of those changes—and not to confuse spaceflight-induced health changes with those that may be caused by exposure to martian materials, including, potentially, martian life. IT WILL TAKE DECADES TO DEVELOP SYSTEMS AND PROCEDURES REQUIRED TO PREVENT CONTAMINATION OF MARS BY HUMANS-Rummel et al 2010 [John D.; Institute for Coastal Science and Policy; The Integration of Planetary Protection Requirements and Medical Support on a Mission to Mars; the Journal of Cosmology; October-November 2010; http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars126.html; retrieved 29 July 2011] The process of planning a human mission to Mars has only just begun. It will take decades to balance the limitations of our transport and life support systems against the need for complex medical care during the mission, and the overall hazards of the martian environment. The potential for human contamination to spread on Mars could destroy scientific and resource-use opportunities for generations to come, while the potential to encounter unknown martian life forms (which may be more dangerous if they turn out to be closely related to us) generates the concern that such a mission could endanger even the Earth, itself. For such a mission to be truly successful, and for its planning to be truly robust given the potential for robotic discoveries on Mars, it is essential that planetary protection requirements be developed from the first, and that future medical care systems for Mars embody planetary protection support as a critical requirement. ACCEPTING THE INEVITABILITY OF EARTH’S DESTRUCTION WILL LEAVE A VACUUM IN THE CONSCIOUSNESS NECESSARY TO SOLVE EARTH’s PROBLEMS-Williams ‘10 [Lynda; Physics Instructor, Santa Rosa Junior College;Irrational Dreams of Space Colonization; Peace Review, A Journal of Social Justice; Spring 2010] We have much to determine on planet Earth before we launch willy nilly into another race into space and a potential environmental disaster and arms race in outer space. If we direct our intellectual and technological resources toward space exploration without consideration of the environmental and political consequences, what is left behind in the wake? The hype surrounding space exploration leaves a dangerous vacuum in the collective consciousness of solving the problems on Earth. If we accept the inevitability of Earth’s destruction and its biosphere, we are left looking toward the heavens for our solutions and resolution. Young scientists, rather than working on serious environmental challenges on Earth, dream of Moon or Martian bases to save humanity, fueling the prophesy of our planetary destruction, rather than working on solutions to solve the problems on Earth. WE DO NOT NEED TO LEAVE THE PLANET TO ENSURE HUMANITY; THE MOON OFFERS A SANCTUARY AND A BASE FROM WHICH WE CAN RETURN TO EARTH-Shapiro ‘07 [Robert; Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Scientist in the Chemistry Department of New York University; Why the Moon? Human survival!; The Space Review; 19 Mar 2007; http://www.thespacereview.com/article/832/1 retrieved 16 Jul 2011] Physicist Stephen Hawking, and a number of others, have called for humanity to spread out to distant planets of our Solar System. But there is no need to go so far to protect ourselves. After a few decades—centuries at worst—dust and ash will settle, radioactive materials will decay, and viruses will perish. Earth will once again become the best home for humanity in the Solar System. Return would be easiest if a safe sanctuary were nearby. In the more probable instance that only a limited disaster took place, that nearby sanctuary could also play a valuable role in restoring lost data and cultural materials, and coordinating the recovery. And of course, construction of the rescue base will be much easier if it is only days, rather than months or years, away. We do not have to build the base from scratch, in an environment of emptiness, as we are attempting to do with the space station. A suitable platform has been orbiting our planet ever since its formation. On most clear nights, we need only look up to see it. If I employ the same arithmetic that I use when I insure my home, the cost of the lunar base can easily be justified. Missile Defense Negative SOLVENCY: MISSILE DEFENSE DOESN’T WORK THE UNITED STATES DANGEROUSLY EXAGGERATES THE CAPACITIES OF MISSILE DEFENSE, WHICH HAS STILL NEVER BEEN TESTED IN A REALISTIC SETTING-Butt ‘10 [Yousaf; physicist in the High-Energy Astrophysics Division at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; The Myth of Missile Defense as Deterrent; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; 08 May 2010; http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/the-myth-of-missile-defense-deterrent; retrieved 20 Jul 2011] Exaggerating the abilities of missile defense is downright dangerous and military leaders ought to make sure that it doesn't happen; unfortunately, it does. Take, for example, these claims made in the February 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense Review (BMDR) report PDF: "The United States now possesses a capacity to counter the projected threats from North Korea and Iran for the foreseeable future." And: "The United States is currently protected against the threat of limited ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] attack, as a result of investments made over the past decade in a system based on ground-based midcourse defense." Neither of these statements is remotely true. The current system cannot even reliably intercept a single missile that's launched at a known time and on a known trajectory. None of the various missile defense systems, sea- or land-based, have ever been tested in a realistic setting: For instance, a surprise attack with salvos of missiles with decoy warheads (and other countermeasures) and unknown trajectories. J. Michael Gilmore, the director of the Operational Test and Evaluation Office of the Secretary of Defense, recently testified PDF that "it will take as many as five to seven years to collect" just the necessary data to determine whether the administration's planned missile defense architecture is even sensible. And if future tests do prove it to be an empirical failure will the administration really roll back missile defense? It's unlikely. The long-range plans appear to be unencumbered by any realistic testing requirements. ARGUMENTS OVER MISSILE DEFENSE ARE THEORETICAL; NO PROOF EXISTS-Spinardi ‘10 [Graham; Sr. Research Fellow @ISSTI; Technological Controversy and US Ballistic Missile Defence: Star Warriors versus the Huntsville Mafia; 2010; retrieved 19 Jul 2011; http://www.stis.ed.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/30600/SpinardiBMDTechControversyWP.pdf] Disputes over BMD technology thus rely heavily on theoretical arguments. Although the origins of Reagan’s Star War speech and the resulting SDI had much to do with domestic politics, the pivotal conceptual element was the argument for using boost-phase interception to overcome the challenge of multiple warheads and decoys. This is compelling in principle because the difficulties of midcourse discrimination are considerable, and this is generally considered a significant potential weakness of the GMD system that is currently deployed.127 However, advocates of midcourse defence maintain discrimination would be possible with a well-designed system against likely decoys. FRAUD IS AT THE HEART OF THE MISSILE DEFENSE PROGRAM-Pierce ‘05 [Charles; Going Postol; The Boston Globe; 23 October 2005; http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/10/23/going_postol/?page=1; retrieved 13 August 2011] Postol sees fraud at the heart of the program, as well as wide-ranging ancillary frauds, in which he maintains MIT has become a willing partner. The missile defense program was born 22 years ago as an evanescent vision - part George Patton, part George Lucas. It's not much more real today. So far, the dispute at MIT has spanned two years, several internal investigations, and one heart attack for Postol. He goes on, blowing his whistle in every direction. WE’VE KNOWN SINCE THE 1960S THAT SIMPLE COUNTERMEASURES WILL RENDER MISSILE DEFENSE INEFFECTIVE-Butt ‘11 [Yousaf; scientific consultant to the Federation of American Scientists ; Billions for Missile Defense, Not a Dime for Common Sense; Foreign Policy 10 June 2011] What they should really be worried about is that the system will never protect the United States or NATO -- no matter how many more billions of taxpayer dollars are thrown at it -- and that it may actually lead to more nuclear weapons worldwide, not fewer. Missile defense, as it's currently being set up, can be easily defeated by any country that can field ballistic missiles -- no deep secrets leaked from the bowels of the Pentagon are needed at all. As the CIA's own top specialist in strategic nuclear programs testified in 2000, "Many countries, such as North Korea [and] Iran … probably would rely initially on readily available technology … to develop penetration aids and countermeasures. These countries could develop countermeasures based on these technologies by the time they flight test their missiles." Nothing has changed in the intervening decade to change this calculus. The simplest countermeasures are cheap inflatable balloon decoys similar to the shiny ones at children's birthday parties. Because the missile-defense interceptors try to strike the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) warheads in the vacuum of space, these balloons and the warhead would travel together, making it impossible to tell apart the decoys from the real thing. An enemy bent on delivering a nuclear payload to the United States could inflate many such balloons near the warhead and overwhelm the defense system by swamping it with fake signals. No technical secrets are needed to defeat the system because these obvious weaknesses have been repeatedly pointed out by the country's top scientists since the 1960s. MISSILE DEFENSE WILL NEVER MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN TERMS OF PROTECTING A COUNTRY FROM NUCLEAR ATTACK-Podvig ‘09 [Pavel; research associate at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation; The False Promise of Missile Defense; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; 14 Sep 2009; http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/pavel-podvig/the-false-promise-of-missile-defense; retrieved 19 Jul 2011] More largely, it will be tough for Obama to let go of missile defense because until now, the discussion has been framed in such a way that it's implicitly assumed that missile defense is a fundamentally useful thing--as long as it can be made efficient and built at reasonable cost without damaging the prospect for nuclear disarmament, of course. In short, the argument often is that the current missile defense system is flawed, but if those flaws could be solved, missile defense would be a great boon to international security. Missile defense proponents, of course, go much further, stating that missile defense provides a reliable (and some insist the only) way to counter emerging missile threats. The notion of missile defense as a good thing even entered the nuclear abolition debate earlier this year, with many experts ready to grant it a useful role at the final stages of disarmament, arguing that it might provide protection against those who cheat the system and attempt to build/use a nuclear weapon. The fundamental problem with this argument is that missile defense will never live up to these expectations. Let me say that again: Missile defense will never make a shred of difference when it comes to its primary mission--protecting a country from the threat of a nuclear missile attack. That isn't to say that advanced sensors and interceptors someday won't be able to deal with sophisticated missiles and decoys. They probably will. But again, this won't overcome the fundamental challenge of keeping a nation safe against a nuclear threat, because it would take only a small probability of success to make such a threat credible while missile defense would need to offer absolute certainty of protection to truly be effective. ALL MISSILE DEFENSE WOULD DO IS TO ADD UNCERTAINTY WITHOUT MAKING A FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE-Podvig ‘09 [Pavel; research associate at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation; The False Promise of Missile Defense; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; 14 Sep 2009; http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/pavel-podvig/the-false-promise-of-missile-defense; retrieved 19 Jul 2011] This was fairly easy to grasp during the Cold War. At that time, it was clear that no defense could realistically protect people against thousands of warheads. But now that the Cold War is over and the threat involves a handful of warheads (if that many), the goal of building a working missile defense system seems within reach. Indeed, how hard would it be to intercept a rudimentary missile launched by North Korea? The answer seems simple: Not easy, but definitely doable. But it's the wrong question to ask. Instead, we should ask: Would missile defense change Washington's strategic calculation in a potential conflict with North Korea or Iran? The answer to this question is a firm no. In a real confrontation, missile defense would be irrelevant at best. For starters, the probability of a country such as North Korea successfully launching a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to U.S. territory is low. So when all of the uncertainties in missile and warhead performance are added up, the chance of success probably wouldn't be higher than a few percent (which, by the way, is considered a highly potent threat worthy of a multibillion dollar investment in missile defense). Missile defense eventually might be able to reduce that chance, maybe even considerably, but it will never reduce it to zero. In other words, the defending side would still face a threat that isn't much less credible than it was without missile defense. So the best missile defense can do is to replace one small probability with another. Yet, since nobody knows what exactly these probabilities are in the first place, it would just add one more level of uncertainty to an already uncertain situation without making a fundamental difference. MISSILE DEFENSE RESEARCH WAS BOGUS AND ITS WEAKNESSES WERE COVERED UP-Pierce ‘05 [Charles; Going Postol; The Boston Globe; 23 October 2005; http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/10/23/going_postol/?page=1; retrieved 13 August 2011] For 15 years now, Postol has been the leading scientific critic of missile defense, which endeavors to shoot an enemy's long-range missiles out of the sky. It is Postol's opinion that the idea did not work when Ronald Reagan proposed it in 1983, does not work now, and will not work in the conceivable future, and he neither minces words nor suffers fools gladly. In the latter category, he has come to include not only the advocates of missile defense but also the highest administrators at MIT, who Postol says have conspired to cover up "fraud" in the testing of missile defense in order to maintain a lucrative relationship with the country's defense establishment. MIT's Lincoln Laboratory received more than $70 million this year from the Missile Defense Agency for work on missile defense. Postol has accused researchers at the facility of being complicit in fudging a report on a missile defense test in 1998. And he has charged that MIT is covering up the coverup. The dispute's final layer is Postol's claim that MIT retaliated against him by removing him from the institute's Security Studies Program, by increasing his program's overhead costs, and by attempting to move him to offices outside the MIT campus. There is no DMZ in Postol's vocabulary. He talks about "fraud" and about colleagues who "betrayed" him. He calls Susan Hockfield, the new president of MIT, the "Enron CEO" because she declined to see evidence that Postol tried to present in defense of his claims. "She wants deniability so she refuses to accept what she wants," Postol fumes. "She's the CEO of this corporation. What is this, Ken Lay? Jeffrey Skilling? That's the Ken Lay defense, and I find that immoral." Postol is even less cordial about Hockfield's predecessor, Charles Vest.
[Charles; Going Postol; The Boston Globe; 23 October 2005; http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/10/23/going_postol/?page=1; retrieved 13 August 2011] To his credit, Postol has taken aim at a very big fish in a very small barrel. For two decades now, billions of dollars have been poured into missile defense. And, yet, the basic problem - hitting an incoming missile - still seems beyond any solution. The last two tests, conducted over the Pacific in December and February, failed when the rocket that was supposed to knock down an incoming nuclear missile didn't leave its silo. Cost: $85 million each. "Missile defense is ultimately an immoral thing to do," Postol says. It's like telling people, `Go walk over that bridge,' when you know it's likely to collapse."It would be easy to dismiss Postol as an eccentric loudmouth, if not for one thing. Postol was right once before. In 1991, the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the Patriot missile system was a technological star. Army officials claimed that the system, built by Raytheon Co. of Lexington, had intercepted 45 of the 47 Iraqi Scud missiles at which it had been fired. Proponents of missile defense cited the Patriot as proof of the efficacy of antimissile missiles, so much so that Congress increased the budget of the missile defense program that year substantially. But when Postol studied the video footage of the Patriot-Scud engagments, he concluded that the Patriot had destroyed not a one. The Pentagon was outraged, going so far as to classify the article in which Postol presented his case. Raytheon officials accused him of tinkering with the video footage. Ultimately, Postol's work was vindicated.
[Charles; Going Postol; The Boston Globe; 23 October 2005; http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/10/23/going_postol/?page=1; retrieved 13 August 2011] Over time, the program has envisioned many exotic technologies: 100-ton space-based lasers, neutral particle beams, electromagnetic rail guns. In her history of missile defense, Way Out There in the Blue, author Frances FitzGerald reports that at least the germ of the idea may have come to Reagan out of a 1940 spy film called Murder in the Air, in which Reagan portrayed a secret agent in charge of something called an "Inertia Projector," a device capable of knocking down enemy aircraft. Throughout, missile defense had a shiny technological patina to it, consonant with other great American leaps forward like the Manhattan Project or the Apollo program. It's more than 20 years on now, and the shine is off. The threat against which Reagan proposed to array his system was crumbling into its component parts six years after his speech. Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars" to its critics) is now simply National Missile Defense. The effort has cost $92.5 billion, and its cost is still going up, which is more than can be said of its rockets. MISSILE DEFENSE INTERNAL REVIEW HAS BEEN STOPPED BY THE PENTAGON-Pierce ‘05 [Charles; Going Postol; The Boston Globe; 23 October 2005; http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/10/23/going_postol/?page=1; retrieved 13 August 2011] Postol agreed with the analysts and described the problem in a letter to the Clinton White House. Whereupon, just as it did in the controversy over the Patriot, the Pentagon classified both the report and Postol's letter. Postol also brought his concerns to Vest, MIT's president at the time, because researchers at Lincoln Lab were involved in the report that Postol considered dubious. MIT launched an inquiry, which led to an investigation. "In this case," says Claude Canizares, the associate provost who's overseeing the probe, "the Department of Defense did not want us to conduct the investigation we requested. At that point, we have to go to plan B - which is working with them, which is the direction we're going. It's not settled yet." SOLVENCY: MISSILE DEFENSE DOES NOT DETER MISSILE DEFENSE IS DANGEROUS AND DESTABILIZING WITHOUT ADDING TO US DETERRENT-Butt ‘10 [Yousaf; physicist in the High-Energy Astrophysics Division at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; The Myth of Missile Defense as Deterrent; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; 08 May 2010; http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/the-myth-of-missile-defense-deterrent; retrieved 20 Jul 2011] The Obama administration's long-awaited Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) "establishes U.S. nuclear policy, strategy, capabilities and force posture for the next five to ten years." The review signals a fresh approach to nuclear doctrine; however, its reliance on missile defense as an element of nuclear deterrence is wrong. Such systems are useless, dangerous, and destabilizing, and ramping up reliance on missile defenses because of planned reductions to the U.S. operational nuclear stockpile is deeply misguided. Specifically, the new NPR states, "Nuclear forces will continue to play an essential role in deterring potential adversaries and reassuring allies and partners around the world. But fundamental changes in the international security environment in recent years--including the growth of unrivaled U.S. conventional military capabilities, major improvements in missile defenses [emphasis added], and the easing of Cold War rivalries--enable us to fulfill those objectives at significantly lower nuclear force levels and with reduced reliance on nuclear weapons." In other words, the posture review essentially asserts that missile defense can somehow compensate for the deterrent capability that will supposedly be lost due to reductions in the U.S. nuclear stockpile. Setting aside the fact that there haven't been any realistic tests indicating "major improvements in missile defenses," such logic is questionable on three levels.
[Yousaf; physicist in the High-Energy Astrophysics Division at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; The Myth of Missile Defense as Deterrent; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; 08 May 2010; http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/the-myth-of-missile-defense-deterrent; retrieved 20 Jul 2011] Second, even if reducing the U.S. stockpile did affect U.S. deterrent posture, missile defense couldn't replace any lost deterrent value because missile defense doesn't deter nuclear attacks. The purpose of missile defense is to defend--or, more accurately, attempt to defend. An adversary wouldn't be deterred from launching a nuclear attack because of the existence of missile defense; rather, it's the credible threat of overwhelming nuclear retaliation that deters an adversary. If the enemy is irrational and suicidal enough to discount the threat of massive nuclear retaliation, then a missile defense system that can theoretically intercept only some of the attacking missiles most certainly isn't going to be a deterrent. In wonk parlance, the NPR conveniently conflates reprisal deterrence with denial deterrence. Reprisal deterrence is the 800-pound gorilla, and denial deterrence is the flea. If our adversaries are thinking twice about using nuclear weapons it's because they're scared of reprisal deterrence. And if they aren't sufficiently scared of reprisal, fractional denial certainly isn't going to stop them. To borrow an analogy used by Thomas Schelling, a Nobel laureate with a deep knowledge of arms control and game theory: Denial deterrence adds to reprisal deterrence like tying an extra cotton string adds to the strength of an aircraft carrier's anchor chain. Directory: file -> fetch fetch -> 11 th Lit Semester 1 Final Study Guide!!! fetch -> Industrial Revolution Inventors fetch -> Analysis for Galveston Hurricane of 1900 fetch -> The Illuminators (Team 2) 1900 Galveston Hurricane Cycle a team Assignment fetch -> Team csi-utb ruth Reyes Jose Ferrer fetch -> Galveston Hurricane of 1900 Cycle a-teacher as a Problem Solver fetch -> Is Climate Change Starting a New Dust Bowl? Cycle A fetch -> What makes a storm a hurricane fetch -> The 1950s were the "Happy Days" because it was a time of economic prosperity, technology development, new entertainment, new fashion and family growth. The 1950s was a great time fetch -> Sputnik and The Dawn of the Space Age Download 1.49 Mb. Share with your friends:
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